Re: [Evolution-hackers] Evolution SSL/TLS improvements

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 03:11 +0200, Enver ALTIN wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 17:20 -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > In this mockup, we have the "Test", "Work", and "Test Work" accounts
> > (yes, I'm lazy, and just copied stuff
> > around in GIMP). The "Test" account is connected, but is not over a
> > secure connection. The "Work" account
> > is connected, and secure. And, the "Test Work" account is
> > disconnected. "On This Computer" is local, and
> > has a special icon. To support this, we basically need to add 2 new
> > flags to the CamelStore API. These flags
> > would be something like CAMEL_STORE_IS_SECURE, and
> > CAMEL_STORE_IS_LOCAL. This will allow us to
> > determine if we are local, and once we are connected, if we are
> > secure. Jeff informed me that API already
> > exists to tell if we are connected, so we can add the disconnected
> > icon support very easily.
>
> Awesome. Actually, I'd love to have the security status to show up on
> the send/receive dialog too.
>
> > As far as actual behavior and settings go, the most user-friendly
> > method, is to default to the highest level
> > of security, and safely fall back through lower levels. Based on this
> > ideology, we can get rid of the "Never"
> > and "Whenever Possible" options, and just always try to do STARTTLS,
> > and with the status icons in the
> > tree above, the user will know what is going on. As for the "Always"
> > option, we can turn it into a check
> > box, and when enabled, rather than falling back to a cleartext
> > connection, if STARTTLS nor SSL Port work,
> > just fail to connect, and set the status to disconnected. This would
> > give us the following interfaces when
> > built with ssl support enabled, and without:
>
> Well, well. What if I just don't want to get these messages over a clear
> text link at all? How do I know if it will ever be able to connect
> securely? How do I prevent it from retrieving any data over a clear-text
> connection?

Well, in 2.1 we had the options more obvious, we had SSL, TLS, no security.  But that got reverted for some totally unobvious reason to me.

--

Michael Zucchi <notzed ximian com> "Free Software, putting the Free back in Free Market." Novell's Evolution and Free Software Developer